They also danced round the
fires and indulged in noisy pastimes.[630]
Sec. 7. _The Midwinter Fires_
[A Midwinter festival of fire; Christmas the continuation of an old
heathen festival of the sun.]
If the heathen of ancient Europe celebrated, as we have good reason to
believe, the season of Midsummer with a great festival of fire, of which
the traces have survived in many places down to our own time, it is
natural to suppose that they should have observed with similar rites the
corresponding season of Midwinter; for Midsummer and Midwinter, or, in
more technical language, the summer solstice and the winter solstice,
are the two great turning-points in the sun's apparent course through
the sky, and from the standpoint of primitive man nothing might seem
more appropriate than to kindle fires on earth at the two moments when
the fire and heat of the great luminary in heaven begin to wane or to
wax. In this way the savage philosopher, to whose meditations on the
nature of things we owe many ancient customs and ceremonies, might
easily imagine that he helped the labouring sun to relight his dying
lamp, or at all events to blow up the flame into a brighter blaze.
Certain it is that the winter solstice, which the ancients erroneously
assigned to the twenty-fifth of December, was celebrated in antiquity as
the Birthday of the Sun, and that festal lights or fires were kindled on
this joyful occasion.
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